For Huskies, Season On The Stink

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — — The 2011 UConn football team teeters today on the line between mediocrity and flat-out bad.

After this complete and unsightly West Virginian collapse, sure, there will be doomsayers who will mock the suggestion that the Huskies could still finish 6-6.

And just as surely, there will be the pompom shakers who fill email bins with outrage at those who would suggest the Huskies could lose out and finish 2-10.

The truth today is neither proposition is absurd.

So let's embrace the larger truth, folks. UConn's big hope now is the rest of the Big East beyond West Virginia turns out to be El Stinkeroo. And there is some evidence that is the case.

Much of what happened to UConn at Milan Puskar Stadium Saturday in the 43-16 loss to the No. 16 Mountaineers is the result of playing a superior team on the road.

Visiting teams are known to hang tough for a while. Teams do commit huge gaffes that serve as turning points. And teams do buckle as a superior home team rides the crest of fan emotion.

What was stunning was how fast the UConn offense unraveled in an eight-minute span in the third quarter. What was stunning was how fast the UConn defense unraveled. So fast, so stunning you wonder if they panicked. You wonder how badly they lost their composure. You wonder if a few guys packed their bags early.

"It was a game that got of whack," coach Paul Pasqualoni said.

Yes, out of whack as fast as John Denver could sing, "Almost heaven, West Virginia."

OK, we'll stop right there. West Virginia can do what it did to the Huskies to any team in the Big East. So more than stunning it's sobering, because week after week, the Huskies seem to gravitate to the worst possible scenario. And you have to wonder if the cumulative effect eventually will suck the life out of this team.

Again, it is not absurd to suggest the Huskies could have been 5-0 on the season and about to take a 16-10 lead seven minutes into the second half when Johnny McEntee decided to run on first down from the WVU 13. This was a 65-yard drive. At that point, the Huskies had a big advantage in time of possession.

"I think we had them right where we wanted them," McEntee said.

They didn't.

Already off two tight end sets the Huskies had been twice penalized for an illegal man down field. And now here was an illegal shift. Two players were in motion and Pasqualoni said afterward he still wasn't sure what happened. The ball was snapped. McEntee didn't see anybody open. He ran. Instead of going down and protecting the ball, he stayed up, cornerback Pat Miller jarred the ball loose and linebacker Jewone Snow took it 83 yards to the UConn 12.

"I was stunned," McEntee said.

One bad play and they were toast. Pasqualoni said WVU suddenly started playing a little bit more confident and a little bit looser. The flipside is the Huskies started playing much less sure and a whole lot tighter.

From that moment, UConn stunk. They were clearly rattled. They fell apart. It turned dismal. Over the final seven possessions, the offense gained 32 yards on 24 plays. The offense lost points when McEntee called the wrong protection call, dropped back into the end zone when he shouldn't have and was tackled for a safety. Yes, West Virginia picked up the rush with the lead. Yes, it got loud and nasty. And, yes, McEntee, who seemed so poised and mature for 37 minutes, looked green and jittery the final 23.

After the fumble, Pasqualoni said he badly wanted to keep the offense on the field. But all he got was three and out, three and out, two and safety … you get the picture.

On defense, WVU put up 23 points in the final 7:44 of the third quarter. Could have been 16-10 UConn, instead it was 33-9 Mountaineers. In 7:44, they ran up 146 yards on 12 plays. Pasqualoni tried plenty to stop the pass after being torched for 479 yards by Alex Carder last week. He started Byron Jones, moving him from safety to corner in place of Gary Wilburn, who struggled so badly against Western Michigan. He started Ty-Meer Brown in place of Harris Agbor at safety. He used a lot of three down linemen. Yet in the end statistically the Huskies still gave up 469 yards passing.

Yes, Brad Starks made a tremendous athletic play over Dwayne Gratz for a touchdown catch. But immediately after WVU made it 17-9 off the McEntee fumble, Brown also missed a tackle on Stedman Bailey. What should have been a 15-yard play became an 84-yard touchdown. "Took the wind out of our sails," Pasqualoni said of the play.

Yet here's the thing, a couple of plays didn't just take the wind out of the Huskies' sails. The whole boat sank in eight minutes. Leadership and composure comes from two ways, from the top down and from inside the locker room out. So there's plenty of responsibility and culpability to share.